FOREIGN RELATIONS

The policy of our foreign relations, casting aside any suggestion of force, rests solely on the foundation of peace, good will, and good works.  We have sought, in our intercourse with other nations, better understandings through conference and exchange of views its befits beings endowed with reason.  The results have been the gradual elimination of disputes, the settlement of controversies, and the establishment of a firmer friendship between America and the rest of the world that has ever existed tit any previous time.

The example of this attitude has not been without its influence upon other countries.  Acting upon it, an adjustment was made of the difficult problem of reparations.  This was the second step toward peace in Europe.  It paved the way for the agreements which were drawn up at the Locarno Conference.  When ratified, these will represent the third step toward peace.  While they do not of themselves provide an economic rehabilitation, which is necessary for the progress of Europe, by strengthening the guarantees of peace they diminish the need for great armaments.  If the energy which now goes into military effort is transferred to productive endeavor it will greatly assist economic progress.

The Locarno agreements were made by the, European countries directly interested without any formal intervention of America, although on July 3 I publicly advocated such agreements in an address made in Massachusetts.  We have consistently refrained from intervening except when our help has been sought and we have felt it could be effectively given, as in the settlement of reparations and the London Conference.  These recent Locarno agreements represent the success of this policy which we have been insisting ought to be adopted, of having European countries settle their own political problems without involving this country.  This beginning seems to demonstrate that this policy is sound.  It is exceedingly gratifying to observe this progress, both in its method and in its result promises so much that is beneficial to the world.

When these agreements are finally adopted, they will provide guarantees of peace that make the present prime reliance upon force in some parts of Europe very much less necessary.  The natural corollary to these treaties should be further international contracts for the limitation of armaments.  This work was successfully begun at the Washington Conference.  Nothing was done at that time concerning land forces because of European objection.  Our standing army has been reduced to around 118,000, about the necessary police force for 115,000,000 people.  We are not proposing to increase it, nor is it supposable that any foreign country looks with the slightest misapprehension upon our land forces.  They do not menace anybody.  They are rather a protection to everybody.